


Bared

by betweenheroesandvillains



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, Female Kylo Ren, I don't usually genderbend but there was a conflict I think fits a girl better, Phasma (mentioned) - Freeform, Rey (mentioned) - Freeform, female Knights of Ren, rule 63 Kylo Ren
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-15
Updated: 2016-04-15
Packaged: 2018-06-02 09:55:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6561850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betweenheroesandvillains/pseuds/betweenheroesandvillains
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some nights, the monster remembers that it was a girl once.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bared

**Author's Note:**

> This silence is my companion now.  
> I ask: of what did my soul die?  
> and the silence answers
> 
> if your soul died, whose life  
> are you living and  
> when did you become that person?
> 
>  
> 
> —Louise Glück, from “Echoes”, Averno

There are girls, and there are monsters.

And there are stories of girls who turn themselves monsters. There are stories of girls who set themselves on fire and out of the ashes something arises that is terrible and bloody and greedy and vicious. There are stories of girls who went into the woods and never returned. Those are not the kind of stories you tell children at night. Those are the kind of stories you tell in the dark, when you realize that there is something in there with you that is much, much bigger and much, much deadlier than you. It's the stories you tell to make sure the monster knows you know what it was once before it kills you. It's the stories that die in your throat when the teeth close around it.

Kylo Ren is a name mostly said around a mouth full of fear, a mouth full of hatred or a mouth full of blood. It's not that Kylo Ren would mind. In fact, Kylo Ren enjoys it. Because Kylo Ren is a monster, one of the worst kind. One that clawed its way into the world, and still keeps clawing and mauling and tearing it to shreds. One that feeds and feeds and feeds on pain and suffering and is always hungry. One that carries a lightsaber and death.  
That is what they say about Kylo Ren.

But some nights, even the monster lies awake in the dark. Some nights, the monster breathes through clenched teeth because it knows it is not the biggest and deadliest thing out there. Some nights, the monster has to remind itself that it is a monster.  
Some nights, the monster remembers that it was a girl once.

 

Hands in her hair. There are hands in her hair and hands on her shoulders and hands in her hands. There is always touching, and light, and laughter and people who hold her. There is something around her, on her, within her that she can't quite name, but she can touch it and hold it and twist it into different shapes. She can tell that thing what to do, and it obeys. She can tell it to shape the world into a place that is less frightening, and it does so. It shatters the chandelier that hangs too heavily over her head. It pushes the people away that come too close.  
There is a girl, and she has her mother's stubbornness and her father's chin. There is a girl who searches for these things in the mirror. There is a girl that is lonely and small and tired and angry and afraid. There is a girl...

 

The monster sits up. The other monsters raise their heads, slowly, watching the girl - no, watching Kylo Ren get to her - its feet. The other monsters are just like Kylo Ren. They are sleek and black and carry death under their fingernails and between their teeth. All of them were girls once. Some set themselves on fire. Some begged Kylo Ren to do it. All are no longer girls. All are terrible.  
Kylo Ren was the first of them, though, and they follow Kylo like death follows the plague, like silence follows war. They follow Kylo Ren, and they leave Kylo Ren, and they return to Kylo Ren. True monsters are few and far between, and they stick together. There is always that unspoken fear between them of what might happen if they saw their own reflection and there was no monster staring back but something small and breakable.

There is a monster called Kylo Ren, but sometimes it has to retract its claws and pretend it isn't a monster. Sometimes, the monster pretends to be a girl, if only for the sake of fitting into the little space they leave it - her. Her. Sometimes, she puts the mask on (or pulls it off? No, puts it on.) and walks the way mortals do, and pretends to be one of them.

"Why do you keep your hair like this," Phasma asks and points at the low bun. The girl-not-monster-not-now stares at her with eyes that are murderer and victim at the same time. They saw everything, but not enough. Not-Kylo-Ren doesn't answer as she lifts the weight past her chin. "It's impractical," Phasma says and shakes her head, short-cropped hair not once falling in her eyes. Phasma is tall and strong and would make a formidable monster. But she is only a woman, something born through blood and crying, not through smoke and flames.  
The next time Phasma sees Ren, her hair is not in a bun. It is wild and long and unruly, falling past her shoulders to her waist. Her hair as black as her armour, as black as her cloak, as black as her mask that hides the face of someone who is barely older than twenty-four. The stories of monsters are as old as the universe itself, and so is Kylo Ren. So are the other monsters. There are stories, and they will live and thrive as long as the stories live and thrive. She doesn't tell Phasma of that one time her prey fought back and got a hold on her hair and pulled until her pericranium gave in. The wound, about the size of the palm of Ren's hand, would not stop bleeding for three days. 

General Hux curses her name. The name of the girl who, for one moment, forgets that she is a monster. He curses her name and her family's name, and stares at the shattered remains of the monster-that-would-be, of the girl that failed. And she says, "Go fuck a rathtar," because deep in her bones she isn't a monster, she is a smuggler's child with a broken hip and a mouth full of splintered teeth and a hand that got burned by her own lightsaber. And Hux answers, as she gets carried away by people that seem to be afraid that she might snap back into being terrible and hungry, "Fuck you, Ren."  
She loves him a bit for it. She decides that he can never know.

They fuck, in the dark, without words but with a lot of scratching and holding and struggling for power. They do it more than once. The girl thinks that maybe, deep in his abysmal, wretched heart, Hux might be a monster himself. She feels his urge to set everything on fire in his angry thrusts, in the way he bites pieces of flesh out of her as if he tries to devour her. Being a monster, she bites back, and he laughs deep in his chest as she tries to tear him apart.  
Afterwards, they lie there, hands on each other's body as ungentle reminders of the truth they both know: that pain is still better than nothing at all. Girl-not-monster Ren sits up and looks down at the mess she made, at the shoulders that are barely three inches wider than her own, the blood-caked freckles, the narrowness of the hateful man she doesn't love. He pinches the skin on her hips hard enough to leave a bruise, as if one bruise more or less would make a difference. "You are so soft," he says, maliciously.  
It's a fist to her guts. The monster roars, and tears her wired-shut mouth open to spit out words she never wanted to say. "I don't want to be soft," she hisses, fingertips tearing through his skin. "I want to be unbreakable, unbearable." She doesn't say 'To become unbearable, I have to become impossible first.' She already is. She is Kylo Ren. She thinks about pushing a tendril, a small fragment of the power she holds, into Hux's mind as revenge. Watching it eat him up from the inside would be amusing, all the pain and decay.  
Instead, she leaves a last mark on Hux before she goes and turns into a monster again.

Kylo Ren changes the world one kill at a time. People stop underestimating Kylo Ren, they turn the name into something that is best left unspoken of fear the monster might turn up on their doorsteps. They watch the world being poured into a new form as the monsters do as Supreme Leader says. One Jedi at a time, Kylo Ren swallows what it can find. The power that sang to the girl still sings to the monster, and it yields this power like a weapon. In the monster's wake, nothing stays as it was. The monster sets the world into a better form, as it should be.  
'I will finish what you started, grandfather.' The monster makes this promise over and over.  
But the girl keeps getting in the way.

Hux's eyes widen comically as the pack enters the Finalizer. They are all clad in black, their faces covered, their heads held high. Different sizes, different shapes, all having their lethality hang around them like black clouds. Kylo Ren takes off the mask and bares her teeth in a grin. "General." The sharpness of her voice should make him shudder. But he is Hux, planning to set planets ablaze. He straightens his back, not showing that she took a bite out of his left shoulder only a few days ago. "Ren." She gives him a shrapnel smile and runs a hand through her long locks. Tries to remember how to pretend to be human.  
The monsters behind her do the same. Hux's surprise humms sweetly in her veins, feeding the monster she keeps under the surface, for the first time in months. Girls and monsters. For some reason, people never bring those two together, and Kylo Ren always wondered why. Girls and monsters both eat hearts. Girls and monsters both have sharp teeth. Girls. Girls turned monsters.

 

It does not get her far in the end.

There is another girl. Pure, and white, and small, and nothing but a girl. She does not carry a razor-sharp story inside her. She does not know how heavy the wrong name can be.  
But the power that is a shield around Kylo Ren twists and turns as the tiny girl closes her eyes. It betrays both, the girl and the monster. It curls away from both of them, no matter how hard they try to hold on to it. Then it turns on them. Beats Kylo Ren and breaks through the monster until there is nothing left but the hollow shell. Until there is nothing but a girl.

This is how the stories go.

There are girls, and there are monsters.

And sometimes, these two are not the same.  
It's no comfort to the girl lying in the snow, bleeding and crying and empty.


End file.
